


Sweet and Clear as Moonlight

by apple9131999



Series: The States of America [12]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: American Civil War, CSA, Historical Hetalia, Post-American Civil War, Reconstruction era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 20:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6768958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apple9131999/pseuds/apple9131999
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But she knew how it felt to be ignored and looked over...</p><p>...she was always last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sweet and Clear as Moonlight

_Atlanta, Georgia- May, 1865_

* * *

She was with Brown when he surrendered- she had been at his side for the past four years since she seceded. He didn’t want her to join the other slaves as they ran north for freedom. The terms of his surrender also involved her being there- Alfred would not accept until he could see for himself that she was safe, if not healthy.

She could see Alfred and Connecticut walking behind their union officials as the two of them waited in the parlor of Brown’s home. She stood stiffly at the window, not touching the glass or the wall next to it. She turned away when she saw Connecticut look up to the window.

The whole affair was somewhat boring- Brown was put on parole and her brother and sister would arrange another living arrangement for her. She stayed silent through the entire exchange and only moved when the physician Alfred had brought with him was instructed to check her health. She only had to stare silently at the physician for him to agree not to say anything about the burns on her abdomen and arms.

She spoke very few words to Connecticut or Alfred as the three had dinner together. Alfred filled the air with bright chatter. Connecticut made her plans of re-visiting Tennessee and Virginia before returning home to Rhode and the young territories clear to both Georgia and Alfred- the latter was the only one to argue with her. Georgia couldn’t care less.

Connecticut left her with a kiss to her forehead- as she had done when Georgia had been small and weak during the first Confederacy. Alfred hugged her tight- she returned the hug marginally and tried not to wince as her rough cotton dress dug into the burns and cuts beneath. He promised to be back after he visited the second Confederacy’s Arizona Territory.

She nodded and walked back into her old governor's house.

(Brown was arrested not soon after, and her shiny, newly appointed governor didn’t want to stay in his old house, so Georgia took over possession. That at least solved one problem).

* * *

She had dismissed the staff the minute the deed had been placed in her name. They had never listened to her anyway. Consequently, she was alone in the house when her first visitor almost broke down her door.

It was shaking in its frame as she approached it, a candle held in front of her, her hair ratty and out of control. She stared at the door in semi-wonder, and just a touch of fear. There was a pause just as her hand reached for the doorknob. She hesitated to pull the door open, listening to the huffing breaths from the other side.

“Please,” a hissed, begging, breathless whisper passed through her door. “Georgia, Georgia, please. I’m sorry.”

She froze where she was.

South Carolina, on the other side of the door, sniffed loudly. “They said you’d be here...Please... _Morgan_ , I can’t do this anymore…”

Georgia frowned at the door. South had never called her by her human name before. “What do you want?” she asked, aiming for irritation, but getting soft exhaustion instead.

South was silent. Then, in a pitiful voice, “Let me in.”

“Why should I?” she asked, leaning against the door, the desire to sleep for eons- familiar- washing over her.

“I need to know you’re okay.”

“Talk to Alfred.”

“You would have lied to him. Besides he won’t talk to me anymore. Please Morgan, open the door. I need-”

“Why do you care?” she demanded, stepping away from the door and watching the wax fall down the sides of her candle.

“Because you’re my sister-”

“You have a funny way of showing it,” she spat.

“Georgia, let me in.”

“Go talk to North-”

“I can’t!” South roared in response. Georgia’s cry of ‘Bullshit!’ was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back when she heard something that was clearly bitten back sobs. “I can’t,” he repeated in a broken voice. “She doesn’t want to see me- she can’t see me.”

“She’ll come around.” She had to. They were _the_ Carolinas, they were the closest of all of them, aside from New England. How ever angry North was, how ever stupid South had been, they would make it through.

How long had she wished for something like what the two of them had. How many times she had tried to find a sibling with whom she could share the same easy camaraderie the two Carolina’s had.

“Not this time,” South whined pathetically. “I did something horrible, Morgan.”

What? Like try and start your own nation based on subjugation of my people? Tear apart our family because of your ambition and ability with words?

She said nothing. South continued to be pathetic outside her front door.

She heard him slide down her door and she joined him, sitting on her side of the door, back pressed against the wood. Her candle was placed just in front of her.

“North is blind,” Alex said after a long moment. Georgia sucked in a breath and stared at the candle. “Texas is nearly there. Virginia has polio. Tennessee’s spine is crushed. Mississippi and Alabama had to get amputations. Louisiana had a heart attack the other day. Arkansas is having trouble breathing. Florida won’t talk to me.”

Typical. He went to the white states first- North, Virginia, Tennessee, Texas- Then to the light-skinned, somewhat white-passing Mississippi. Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Florida slowly got darker from Alabama to Florida. And then he visited her, the darkest of them all and a girl to boot.

She wasn’t naive enough to think that after the 13th amendment that things would automatically change between her and the rest of her family. She didn’t believe that South was going to automatically stop looking at her like she was less than the dirt under his heel. She didn’t believe in anything like that.

But she knew how it felt to be ignored and looked over. And she might hate South very much at this point of time, but it always left a sour taste in her mouth to see her family struggling as much as South obviously was.

She was going to regret this.

She opened the door.

* * *

“Are you hurt?” South asked the minute she opened the door and turned away.

“Fine,” she said as she lead the way to the kitchen. She stoked the fire, turning her back on her brother as he sat at the table in the middle of the large ornate kitchen. She swung a pot of hot water over the flames, reaching for a headwrap to tie her hair back as best she can.

“Are you lying to me like you did to Alfred?”

“Who said I lied to Alfred?” she asked, wincing as she pulled on a strand of her hair and not the wrap.

South narrowed his eyes at her as she turned to face him, but his attention was caught quickly and he stared at the exposed flesh of her arm. “What is that?” he demanded, pointing to the trail of red circling up her arms.

Georgia shrugged, smoothing her sleeves back down. “My railroads were ripped up. They’ll go away eventually.”

South swallowed hard. “You’re not...permanently hurt, are you?”

Just the other day, her hands had been shaking too hard and she couldn’t get them to stop and she has broken half of her dishes since she moved in. And sometimes she couldn’t do up the buttons on her dress so she resorted to wearing the cotton dress she had worn during the war. She has letters from their family that she can’t respond to because her hands shake too hard for the letters to be legible.

“No.”  
_

When she was left alone for the five years between the end of the war and her re-admittance to the union, she would envision South Carolina as he was in January, 1861. How brightly he spoke about their new nation and how they would all be stronger than they were now, just like with the Articles.

North, Virginia, and she were the only ones, aside from South, that lived under the Articles. She didn’t remember much from the years under the Articles, but she did remember the sickness. Pennsylvania once coughed so hard and for so long that she knocked herself out. Connecticut and Rhode Island and Alfred seemed to drag everyday. She remembered lying in bed and not being able to get up. She remembered seeing Connecticut and Rhode Island struggle to care for the sick states and the healthy, rambunctious territories. She remembered how Maryland would cry because she couldn’t breathe sometimes. She remembered Connecticut and Rhode Island screaming at each other and at Alfred, a baby on each hip. Rhode Island once looked at Massachusetts as he was bent over, small body shaking with deep coughs, and had started crying. She remembered as they all breathlessly waited as Connecticut slid the quill over to Rhode Island and begged her to sign it. She remembered how Rhode Island had stared at Connecticut for a long time before sighing and handing off Baby Southwest and signing her name. She remembered how it had been alright.

She had let herself get fooled by South Carolina’s ideas of grandeur and how enraptured Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and Louisiana were by his words of the power Alfred was keeping from them. So, she had seceded, because North and Virginia weren’t going to do it and she had hoped that South would look at her like he did to North.

-She should have known when it took Fort Sumter for North and Virginia to join them that they were doomed. But she didn’t-

Draw them southwest, he had said when they went over battle plans. Obviously, the Carolinas were too northeast for the battles, so they fought mostly in Georgia and yet-

Yet...she still got that _look_.

The one that said she wasn’t doing enough even when she couldn’t walk because everything hurt, some days she couldn't breathe, even when her internal narrative was taken over by the names of her dead. Even when she was late to a war meeting because she had to stop walking and almost collapsed because _her railroads were getting torn up_ as the Union marched to the coast. There were teeth marks on her wrist where she had bit down in an effort not to scream. But she still said nothing as she watched the war unfold from her back porch as South’s voice claimed she still did nothing.

* * *

She was the last one to be re-admitted back to their union. It stung, but, then again, she was always last.


End file.
